As Expected, NMU Bringing Big Roster to U23 Trials

Just in case there was any doubt, the country’s foremost “developmental” program is going in heavy for the first-ever U23 World Team Trials.

As of now, there are over three dozen Northern Michigan University Greco-Roman athletes on the roster for the event, which is slated for October 6th-8th at the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester, Minnesota. There is not a long turnaround after that, as the U23 Greco-Roman World Championships are scheduled to begin on November 21st in Bydgoszcz, Poland. That’s approximately six weeks for qualifying wrestlers to zero in on the Worlds. However, that should be plenty of time for NMU athletes as the team reconvened earlier in the summer and will also have an allotment of competitors preparing for the Eduardo Campbell Cup in Panama in a few weeks as well as the Dave Schultz Memorial, which has been moved to November for 2017.

The well-established names US fans are familiar with are all on board for the Trials, including Dalton Roberts (59 kg), Randon Miranda (59 kg), Alex Sancho (66 kg), and Jesse Porter (75 kg), but that’s just the tip of the iceberg, simply because the program as a whole is operating with a different level of strength it hasn’t had in quite some time. Last year, Northern placed more wrestlers at the US Open than ever before. Promising Senior competitors like Colin Schubert (71 kg), Curt Calovecchi (80 kg), and Blake Smith (98 kg) have also emerged to the surface in other domestic events. There is just a lot going on in Marquette right now, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the OTS will be represented on a large scale at the inaugural U23 World Team Trials.

All told, NMU is taking a whopping 41 wrestlers to Rochester with ten of them bunched up in one weight class alone (66 kilograms).